Waiting was Dull but Luckily Alcohol had Improved
by Sezso
Summary: Future!fic. Merlin's got a bit of angst, but mostly he's just bored. Friday nights, he and Nimueh get together for a drink. Occasionally, they try to kill each other.


I wrote this a while back. Before series 2 started even. So... not series 2 compliant. Though I actually don't think it mattered any.

**Title: **Waiting was Dull but Luckily Alcohol had Improved  
><strong>Rating:<strong> Mild PG-13?  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Merlin/Arthur, Nimueh, mostly gen  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Date rape drugs mentioned. No offense intended to any frat boys who, let's face it, probably aren't reading this anyway. This story may have been lightly hit with the crack stick. Also, the ending is a bit... abrupt. *shrugs* Sorry.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I don't own our boys. Or Nimueh. I might own the toucan. But you can borrow him if you like. He's usually pretty grumpy, though.  
><strong>Summary:<strong>Future!fic. Merlin's got a bit of angst, but mostly he's just bored. Friday nights, he and Nimueh get together for a drink. Occasionally, they try to kill each other.

1999 had been a fun year because of all the yapping about the computers crashing and the world exploding. He hadn't really expected it to, but he couldn't _quite _stop the tiny voice that said wouldn't it be lovely if it did because that would be a catastrophe worthy of his king, right? The more deaths the better!

The world changed very little, and he went and got shitfaced for about a month because of his disappointment. Then he stayed shitfaced for the rest of 2000, wondering when in the past whatever centuries, he'd become a selfish _bastard_.

Nimueh finally set him on fire and told him he was _boring_ and if he didn't shape up she was going to go blow up Yugoslavia. He then buggered off to the US because Britain was a bit too much for him just then and ended up working at a hospital. In July he helped implant the world's first self-contained artificial heart in Robert Tools. He hovered anxiously, but didn't end up needing to cheat. The doctors' precision, grace, sheer _genius_ was breathtaking. Brilliant, that's what it was, the amount of concentration and determination that they put into it. Merlin was truly proud to have been a part of it, even though he had done very little.

When Robert died just 151 days later, Merlin quit and buggered off to South America.

2002, 3, 4, and 5 he spent in various rainforests, listening to endangered animals. Well, listening to them _whine_ was probably more accurate. But they got him riled up enough that he bought a large patch of rainforest, bundled it up neatly in a pocket universe, and carried it around with him. He popped in various animals who showed up and asked politely to join. Eventually he'd divided it up and thrown in some arctic lands too because there were these penguins, and they'd just been so _sweet_ about the whole thing, and it wasn't like he had anything important to do so...

Anyway, the short of it was that he'd bundled up quite a bit of the world and was feeling rather smug about it. It didn't really fit in a pocket anymore, because he'd bundled up _quite_ a bit of the world, so it was more like his backpack universe, but whatever. The point _was _that that had been a good couple of years and he wondered why he hadn't done that before.

Animals still kept popping up out of nowhere and asking to join. (The squirrel that found him in a Starbucks was particularly amusing. He bent down, offered the backpack to the squirrel who leapt in, and then returned to his latte before noticing the looks. He'd decided to ignore the looks and calmly finish his drink, but had to give that up and leave to have a nice, long giggle.) He'd gone by Noah for several years before the novelty of it had worn off. Nimueh had asked if she could pop in and have a look, but he'd merely raised an eyebrow at her and told her that he preferred his rainforests to be _not_ on fire, thank you. Then he'd collapsed the ground underneath her and sent her tumbling about 100 feet downward.

One particular animal, a little toucan, joined him about a year into his exile. Merlin had offered him the entrance, still pocket sized at that point, but the toucan and blinked at him, then flew to Merlin's shoulder and happily started being grumpy in his ear.

He didn't seem to want to leave either. He seemed to enjoy hanging around and calling Merlin a "bumbling blockhead" and berating him on his flying attempts. "It is a delicate art. Purely aesthetic. Poetry of motion."

But Merlin had spent the best years of his life being insulted by a prat, so this was actually some of the best fun he'd ever had.

In 2006 he started working again on his Project again because the toucan kept chattering at him that he'd feel better if he did. Surprisingly, he'd managed to find someone to take interest this time. When he got confirmation, he called up the only person who could possibly get it.

"So what's this all about then? A BBC series with Merlin and Arthur the same age?" Nimueh said as she squinted into her glass. "Also, please tell me you didn't resort to arsenic. Don't I rate something more creative?"

"You always complain that aniline poison tastes like rotten fish, and I didn't feel up to anything complicated. Besides, you can't really talk, you've slipped some kind of date rape drug into this, and that's just sad," he said after taking a long swig and making a face.

Nimueh looked affronted. "I'll have you know I invented that formula. It's twice as effective as what the frat boys usually use and it tastes _wonderful_ and you know it. Stop making that face, you're irritating me. Tell me about the BBC, Johnny."

He'd only just switched over to Johnny. A few weeks before it had been Jack, partially because he liked it, and partially because that Jack Harkness fellow was really bloody attractive. Nimueh had looked at him with a raised eyebrow when he had related this bit of incredible logic to her, and then thrown a javelin at him just before his creeping vines got her by the throat.

"Seemed like a good time to do it. And I'm bored. We got Michelle Ryan to play you."

"Does she have a good rack? I refuse to be portrayed without a good rack." Merlin casually set fire to her hair. After a good eye roll, she doused it. "Oi. We're in public and we're pissed. Now is not the time to go trawling through people's thoughts to remove us."

Merlin flapped a hand at her vaguely. "You aren't going to be shamed by her rack. She'll be lovely and psychotic and the audience will love hating her and pair her extensively with Uther, who will be played by Anthony Steward Head."

"That Buffy chap? Ooooo," Nimueh leaned in, intrigued. "Who's you then?"

"Still working on that bit. Christian Bale is busy."

"Well just," and she waved her hand at him, knocking his glass over. The liquid began slowly to eat into the wood. Merlin looked at it, then up at her. She grinned at him. "So, it's maybe a bit more effective than I said."

"People generally like their dates to remain alive."

"Details, details." She mopped up the mess and didn't look up at him as she said, "so, you're doing it right this time?"

Merlin stole her glass and downed it in one. "Figured I'd spent enough time fucking around. Time to do it right."

She didn't smile, but her face suggested that she might think about it.

He'd spent a long time playing with the legends. And by a long time, he meant, you know, a _long_time. He was also, quite possibly, angry with them all for dying. (And he was often drunk. No more whiff's of barmaid's aprons, no sir! More like 2 whiffs now. But that was beside the point.)

The end result was that Arthur ended up cuckolded by _Gwen_ of all ridiculous things, and Morgana and Arthur ended up related _and_ with a kid. His mother and Gaius, well, history didn't seem all that interested in them. At first that had rankled. They were important! But after awhile, it didn't seem to matter anymore. History remembered Arthur's goodness, but _not_ that he was a total prat. He was a golden king instead of a flawed human who became more. Morgana was evil rather than a conflicted, passionate woman, and Gwen, dear sweet, sensible Gwen, was a weak, lovesick woman who ruined everything. If history was going to remember them like that, his mother and Gaius could stay safely forgotten.

And of course, he'd suffered too. Tried to make himself look distinguished and wise, and ended up with a floor length beard and trapped in a _rock_for all eternity. Although he quite liked that living backwards bit. Original, that. But there was something deeply disturbing about being a father/mentor figure to his dearest friend. And the sword thing was ridiculously played up. How it ended up in a rock, Merlin had no idea. People just liked things being trapped in rocks, he supposed. Merlin had tried it for a few years, but personally, he didn't see the appeal.

Nimueh had laughed herself sick over that.

Then she'd gone and messed with the time stream and made this _absolutely, effing ridiculous_ movie in the 1960s called _The Sword in the Stone_ or something like that. He'd been particularly vicious in attacking her after that. C4 in her birthday cake, nitroglycerin in her afternoon tea.

When she swanned back into the 21st century, Merlin looked up at her and smirked as she looked at Archimedes and fidgeted. "Pretty sure that he's ignoring you, Nimmy." Archimedes fluffed his feathers and shuffled on his perch so that his back was facing her.

Nimueh looked shifty. "Look, I _told_ them I wanted a toucan and they just thought that was too weird. There was nothing I could do. Without, you know, even more cheating. And you both get so _mad_ at me when I mess with people's heads!"

Archimedes continued fluffing his feathers.

"I'm sorry okay? _Really_! I didn't mean to make fun of _you_."

Archimedes turned finally and looked at her. "But... an _owl_? They're just so..." he shuddered. "They don't really flap their wings when they fly you know, they coast along on air currents. It's not like how I fly at _all_." He pouted, which is quite impressive when one has a beak.

"I know, I know, but what did you want me to do about it?"

"But an owl!"

Nimueh sighed, used a small thread of magic to smack the back of Merlin's head and flounced out.

"Hey! What did I do?"

"AN OWL!"

"IDIOTS."

The whole Nimueh thing had been a bit of a surprise, really. He'd known, of course, that she'd come back from the dead after the Isle of the Blessed (nobody could have missed _that_ vengeful return). He just hadn't expected her to come back _forever_. When he'd come across her centuries later, he'd been shocked by the intense emotion he felt after centuries of nothing. There had been nothing for so long that he couldn't find a name for the emotion, and merely stopped to look at her.

And then she'd shrieked and thrown lightening and fire at him. That at least, he knew how to respond to.

They fought off and on for another hundred years or so, he lost track really. Some of the battles lasted days, even months. They rearranged geography, and accidentally started quite a few religions. They got involved in politics and wars and battled each other in every arena they could think of.

Then, one day she showed up and Merlin just said, "want to get a drink down at the tavern? First round on me."

Nimueh had straightened from the battle pose she'd taken immediately upon seeing him. Her blue eyes were wild, her brown hair whipping in the wind, her blood red dress still in tatters around her feet. Then the weariness crept into her eyes, the ache of too much life and she followed him to the tavern, muttering, "at least you'll be a cheap date."

She mixed deadly mushrooms in with his regular ones when he went to the bathroom. He snuck cyanide in her salt shaker when she turned around to wave the barmaid over to their table. Afterwards they crawled outside and were ill for a while, then arranged to meet the next week at the same place.

The thing was, she _couldn't die_. Merlin had hated her from the moment he knew who she was. She'd tried to kill him. She'd tried to kill _Arthur_. She was a liar, a murderer and many other things. But she knew who he was and he would never have to bury her. No secrets, no lies, just a mutual desire for sleep.

It was, sometime in March? Merlin settled himself on the bench. The birdseed was there when he reached for it, and he tossed some at his feet. A large red robin promptly sailed down and pecked at it, then abandoned the food for Merlin's left knee. He cocked his head at Merlin and then began to sing, telling Merlin all about his courtship of the pretty girl robin from last week, and the wonderful flight over the river he'd had this morning. Merlin offered his finger to the robin who hopped on, and continued to sing as Merlin brought him closer to his face.

A few more birds sailed in and a handful of squirrels, some eating, and others perching on or around Merlin, adding to the tinkling cacophony, and Merlin listened.

When the sun had slipped a little further in the sky, his friends had all departed and Merlin sighed. He leaned his head back on the bench, closing his eyes against the bright sunshine. For a few moments he kept his mind blank, trying to meditate, but his concentration was shattered when someone sat down on the bench beside him. He shifted slightly and sighed. Should've used the avoidance spell.

There was quiet for a moment, and then Merlin stiffened and sat white and still, as the man said, "you really are the worst warlock ever, _Merlin_. You're really going to need to pay more attention if we're going to get it right this time."

For a moment there was nothing and then, haughtily, "which we _will_, of course." A hand crept into his.

Merlin smiled.

**AN:** Why yes, I DID make Johnny Capps Merlin. XD  
><strong>AN2:<strong> Also, I borrowed Archimedes' lines about flying from the Sword in the Stone movie.


End file.
